When attaching accessories to a vehicle frame, the vehicle frame is not always easily accessible. Some accessory attachment methods include surrounding a frame member of the vehicle frame to which an accessory is to be attached with one or more clamps and tightening the clamp(s) to attach the accessory to that frame member. Typically, such methods require more than one clamp in order to prevent the accessory from rotating around the frame member, especially when the frame member has a circular cross-section.
Other methods of attaching an accessory to a frame member consist in passing a bolt through the accessory and the frame member to which the accessory is to be attached and threading the bolt into a nut on an opposite side of the frame member. One challenge with these methods is holding the nut in place while trying to thread the bolt into the nut, or holding the bolt in place while trying to thread the nut onto the bolt.
Another challenge with such methods of attaching an accessory to a frame member is engaging the nut with a tool and retaining the nut in the tool to hold the nut in place while tightening the bolt. This can be cumbersome in some areas of some vehicle frames, such as the lower frame portions of the vehicle frames for example. Another challenge with such methods of attaching an accessory to a frame member is that at least some vehicle frames are made of frame members that have relatively thin walls. For example, some off-road vehicles have vehicle frame members with 1.4-millimeter wall thickness. Passing a bolt through a frame member that has this wall thickness and tightening the head of the bolt against such the frame member may deform the 1.4-millimeter wall of the frame member.
Other methods of attaching an accessory to a frame member consist in welding nuts or other parts to the vehicle frame during manufacturing of a vehicle, to allow for accessories to be attached to the vehicle frame at some point during the useful life of the vehicle. One challenge with such methods is that they involve permanently adding parts to the vehicle during manufacturing, which parts may end up never being used if no accessories are added using them. In some cases, permanently adding such parts without ever using them unnecessarily increases the vehicle's weight. In some cases, this affects the vehicle's appearance at least while the part(s) are unused. In some cases this also increases the manufacturing cost of the vehicle.
In view of the above drawbacks, it may be desirable to provide a device for attaching components to frame members, and a corresponding method of attaching components to frame members.